July Through the Years

WARNING: This post is extremely honest - perhaps a little too honest. 

Have you ever gone back in your blogging history and seen more-or-less what your interests, your concerns, your overall views and opinions were on things roughly the same date as today, all those years ago?

2013: 

Looking back, a year ago on this day I was right amidst my European tour and posting incredible travel posts to you all on a regular basis. A year ago on this day, I was recapping on Florence in Italy.
The post was popular, funny, exciting and well detailed.

I was traveling to mend a broken heard - to find freedom and independence after a 2 year relationship turned sour.

Time in Florence

2012: 

A year before that, 2012 my writing had seemed to hit somewhat of a standstill. I wrote one post in July two years ago... ONE POST!?! That's unheard of for me anymore - now, I feel bad if I miss three bloody days between posts!!

I think it was July of 2012 when my blog was really starting to get some form of attention. I started to really know how to interact with other bloggers - found new and exciting people and interacted with them. It was a long and slow process but it got me to where I am today.

I wouldn't say my blog is big, but my 328 follows on GFC and 102 on Bloglovin is something I'm super duper proud of and I try as hard as I can to keep in touch with as many people as possible. That's the point isn't it??? I couldn't bare just following someone for the sake of it and not actually communicatign with them. That would be so impersonal.

Oh - one HILARIOUS thing in my only post back in 2012 was saying that I had, 'finished my first novel entitled Walk With Me'..... BWAHAHAHAHA. I must have been on drugs. Or up in the clouds.
Two years have come and gone now and I still feel like it isn't finished and needs a lot of work - but at least this year I finally actually got it published - and people are reading it!

The second novel is coming along amazingly too. I'm now on chapter eight and it's just so beautiful. I am in love with my second book and cannot wait to see that bound and available to you all too!

Two years ago in July I also had a dream... a dream about a pink suitcase. 

I had this insane urge to travel. Who would have guessed that I actually did something about that urge? Two years on and I've hopped onto a ferry and crossed over to France, climbed the Eiffle Tower, gone up the Jungfrau Mountain in Switzerland, lost all my money at the Monaco casino, chucked coins into the Trevi fountain in Rome, ridden a Gondola in Venice, eaten a Tuscan steak in Florence, seen the Berlin Wall, cycled through the Englischer Gartens in Munich, had a tattoo done in Prague, wondered around Anne Frank's house and seen in sex show in Amsterdam, eaten Lobster and gotten ridiculously sunburnt in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The list is endless.
I'm so unbelievably proud of myself for accomplishing some of my many life dreams... and I'm not about to stop now. There is still SO much that I want to do in life. 

The Pink Suitcase and Other Stories.

2011:

Further back, three years ago in 2011 - a boy told me that they loved me. Now, for the record, that ship has long since sailed. But the story about how he confessed his love for me was hilarious and my response to it still absolutely mortifies me!

Read Jade's Most Embarrassing Moment: Here

Oh and if you did read that, you'll be delighted to know that my two friends that I'd recently hooked up in that post are still very much in love and I think I may actually hear the faint sounds of wedding bells playing somewhere........... and I hooked them up. 

Call me Cupid.

2011 was also when Walk With Me was first starting to be created. I was writing like a maniac however and wherever I could. I'd never have guessed it to have taken three years to be a book I am holding in my hands today though. 

Sometimes, dreams really do come true.

2010: 

Then there was 2010. Four years ago. What a crazy thought. Even crazier is that on the 1st of July 2010 was the day that my Grandfather went into a coma. 

I'd found solace in one of my favorite songs by The Doors - This is the End.

I guess it seemed quite fitting at the time.

It's a pretty morbid post but if you'd like to see where my head-space was during that time, here's the link:

 Grand-Dad's Coma

And today - my July of 2014... where am I and what am I doing with my life? Who knows.... that's probably not the answer people expect, but it's the truth. I have no idea where I'm going nor what I'm doing. 

I'm working at an art gallery and it is amazing. It is the best job that I have ever had in my life. I still reside in the tiny town of Knysna - though since avoiding the night clubs and lame ass clicks around this place, it isn't as bad a place as I'd once thought. 

To be honest, I'm a bit of a loner these days. I do my own thing. Enjoy reading, cooking (usually pasta.. with a serious over usage of chilli's,) I'm listening to beautiful indie music like City and Color... and I'm single. Or am I? No... 

I'm not taken. 

I'm not single.

I'm simply on reserve for the one that deserves my heart.... and vice versa. 

I don't think I'll be ready to say those petrifying three words, 'I love you,' to anyone in a very long time. 

I guess, thinking about it, I used to always be in this major rush to have a relationship grow. I wanted marriage and kids and settling down..... but now my mindset as changed. 

As much as it freaking sucks balls to be the only person in my family without a scrabble partner or a charades team mate and as much as I HATE seeing in love couples cuddling up and strolling hand-in-hand wherever I go.... I just want to learn to love myself again before I can even think about loving someone else. 

I lost myself for a while. 

I hit a serious stage of depression, I'm not going to lie.. and to be honest, I'm still in it. 

I wanted desperately to be loved and wanted. I hated myself. I hated looking at myself in the mirror because I felt ugly. Either I was too skinny, or too tubby around my tummy.. I could never reach a place where I was 'happy'. I was too pale or too red or too much or too little of something. 

I hated the sound of my own voice, couldn't stand my tangly hair or dark rings under my eyes. I hated my own thoughts and as much as I tried, I just couldn't find happiness. 

I'm still struggling with all of this. Society has these insane ideas about who you should be and it swallowed me up whole for a really long time. 

I was never good enough. Never pretty enough. Never smart enough or rich enough. I was never just enough.

Throughout the years, the world hasn't necessarily been unkind to me. I have it great actually. Barring a family suffering with alcoholism and general bouts of pure craziness - we all have some sort of issue, do we not??? 

So this is me... 

A miss no body that only craved love but at the same time was so scared of it that I mucked every chance of being loved and being happy up... it's no one else's fault but my own. 

I have screwed my life up for myself and now, I need to fix it. 

This emotional turmoil has given a big beating to my soul and now it is time to open a can of Jade whoop-ass on it and fight back. 

I just want to get to a good place - and I feel being honest with first and foremost, myself, and all of you.. that I'll get there. 

Of course I don't expect any of you to actually read this stuff properly - what are you? My intercontinental psychologist??? 

I'm lost.

I'm in this awful black abyss and I really am trying to get out and save myself - which is hard when you don't even know who you really are. 

I know I'm a good person. A good person that has made some terrible mistakes in life - and believe me, I have suffered for them. 

So... yeah.. maybe this time next year I'll look back and finally be at peace. If I even get there. 

Who knows.... who knows. 

Here's to another year of spiritual enlightenment, growth and finding yourself.